Andrea Nguyen was excited about her new job as a tele­vision reporter in San Diego. It was her first chance to work in a big city market.

The Houston native didn't have time for a social life. After work, Nguyen would usually just drive home.

She didn't see the man who had followed her from the station one day. He asked for directions and when she approached, Nguyen could see that he was masturbating in his car.

"I was disgusted and frightened. I screamed and threw my groceries on the ground," she said.

Later, Nguyen would realize something.

"I think he had been following me before," she said.

The encounter for Nguyen, who later joined KIAH-TV in Houston, is typical for many television reporters, according to industry consultants.

In a recent Houston case, a 38-year-old man remains in the Harris County Jail under $80,000 bail after he was arrested Jan. 2 and charged with stalking KPRC-TV anchor and traffic reporter Jennifer Reyna.

Christopher Marcus Olson's infatuation with Reyna had been ongoing for a number of years, In May 2007, Olson drove his car through the front door of the news station and ignored a court order to have no contact with her, police said.

Not all are harmless

Most stalking cases don't rise to the level of violence. But some have ended tragically, such as the murders of Kathryn Dettman, a TV reporter in Waco, and Anne Pressly, a Little Rock news anchor.

"It's sort of a little hidden secret in the business. Nobody wants to talk about it," said Ann Utterback, a voice specialist and consultant to the television news industry.

Officials at Houston's TV stations did not return requests for comment.

Utterback said almost every female TV news personality she has known has had some kind of experience with a fixated "fan" who obsesses over them.

"It's like living in a house with no curtains. You're totally exposed when you're sitting at an anchor desk," Utterback said.

Mental health specialists coined the term "erotomania" to describe a situation where someone believes another person, usually a public personality, is in love with them.

"They idealize the celebrity. There's a kind of a purified aura and they want to associate themselves with that," said Katherine Ramsland, a forensic psychologist and author of a number of crime-related books.

"They have an idea that you're 'meant' to be together," she said.

Trouble sleeping

Such stalkers tend to be single-minded and focused on their task.

"That person will spend a lot of energy and money to know everything they can about you," Ramsland said. "They know how to put themselves in your path and be noticed by you."

In Nguyen's case, she was able to get the stranger's license plate. As she was calling police, he drove away.

She said San Diego police tracked him down but advised against pressing charges. They were confident he wouldn't cause her any further problems.

She decided to follow their advice. Nor did she report the incident, which happened in 2005, to her station's management.

"I was too embarrassed to tell them," Nguyen said.

She had trouble sleeping for several months. She left the station after less than a year.

Nguyen worked as a reporter at KIAH-TV for about four years before leaving the business to spend more time with her family. She is now a teacher in the Houston area.

Chau Nguyen Todd spent a decade as a TV reporter in Houston and had her own share of incidents of unwanted attention from a "fan."

In 1999, she was working at KRIV-TV when a man began coming to the station and demanding to see her.

"He wanted to take me to a Moody Blues concert. He had a letter for me - it was all in gibberish," she recalled.

Todd said the station took the incident seriously. They arranged to have her escorted to and from work for about week.

"I had an uneasy feeling. I had never been stalked before," she said.

Common-sense advice

Television reporters admit they are often the recipient of attention from the public. They often receive love letters, flowers or other gifts. It most cases, they say it's harmless.

"It's part of the job. It's all part of the territory. Anyone on TV should know that, and if they don't, they're being naive," said a current Houston TV reporter who didn't want her name used because her station has a policy against employees speaking to the media.

Part of today's stalker problem, Utterback said, can be linked to "happy talk" - on-air banter between anchors that first became a staple of local TV news in the 1970s.

"They want the anchors to be friendly - the girl next door," Utterback said.

Stations could take a few common-sense steps to be more secure, said Valerie Hyman, who runs News & Management Training, a consulting firm for the broadcast industry. She suggests the on-air staff keep private information off social media, like Facebook and Twitter, and discourages putting vanity license plates on their vehicles.

"The level of awareness isn't quite where it needs to be," said Hyman, who said she had no first-hand information about what steps Houston's TV stations might have taken.

"We can't stop it (stalkers) but we can certainly do some things to avoid some of it," she said.